1843
TWICE-TOLD TALES
EGOTISM, OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT
FROM THE UNPUBLISHED "ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
HERE HE COMES!" shouted the boys along the street. "Here comes
the man with a snake in his bosom!"
This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears, as he was about to enter the
iron gate of the Elliston mansion, made him pause. It was not
without a shudder that he found himself on the point of meeting his
former acquaintance, whom he had known in the glory of youth, and whom
now, after an interval of five years, he was to find the victim either
of a diseased fancy, or a horrible physical misfortune.
"A snake in his bosom!" repeated the young sculptor to himself. "It
must be he. No second man on earth has such a bosom-friend! And now,
my poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my errand
aright! Woman's faith must be strong indeed, since thine has not yet
failed."
Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the gate, and
waited until the personage, so singularly announced, should make his
appearance. After an instant or two, he beheld the figure of a lean
man, of unwholesome look, with glittering eyes and long black hair,
who seemed to imitate the motion of a snake; for, instead of walking
straight forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a
curved line. It may be too fanciful to say, that something, either
in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had
been wrought, by transforming a serpent into a man; but so
imperfectly, that the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely
hidden, under the mere outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked
that his complexion had a greenish tinge over its sickly white,
reminding him of a species of marble out of which he had once
wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky locks.
The wretched being approached the gate, but, instead of entering,
stopt short, and fixed the glitter of his eye full upon the
compassionate, yet steady countenance of the sculptor.
"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" he exclaimed.
And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it came from the
apparent lunatic's own lips, or was the real hiss of a serpent,
might admit of discussion. At all events, it made Herkimer shudder
to his heart's core.
"Do you know me, George Herkimer?" asked the snake-possessed.
Herkimer did know him. But it demanded all the intimate and
practical acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling
actual likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick
Elliston in the visage that now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it was
he. It added nothing to the wonder, to reflect that the once brilliant
young man had undergone this odious and fearful change, during the
no more than five brief years o
f Herkimer's abode at Florence. The
possibility of such a transformation being granted, it was as easy
to conceive it effected in a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly
shocked and startled, it was still the keenest pang, when Herkimer
remembered that the fate of his cousin Rosina, the ideal of gentle
womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with that of a being whom
Providence seemed to have unhumanized.
"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had heard of this; but my
conception came far short of the truth. What has befallen you? Why
do I find you thus?"
"Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing
in the world. A snake in the bosom- that's all," answered Roderick
Elliston. "But how is your own breast?" continued he, looking the
sculptor in the eye, with the most acute and penetrating glance that
it had ever been his fortune to encounter. "All pure and wholesome? No
reptile there? By my faith and conscience, and by the devil within me,
here is a wonder! A man without a serpent in his bosom!"
"Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand
upon the shoulder of the snake-possessed. "I have crossed the ocean to
meet you. Listen- let us be private- I bring a message from Rosina!
from your wife!"
"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" muttered Roderick.
With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the
unfortunate man clutched both hands upon his breast, as if an
intolerable sting or torture impelled him to rend it open, and let out
the living mischief, even where it intertwined with his own life. He
then freed himself from Herkimer's grasp, by a subtle motion, and
gliding through the gate, took refuge in his antiquated family
residence. The sculptor did not pursue him. He saw that no available
intercourse could be expected at such a moment, and was desirous,
before another meeting, to inquire closely into the nature of
Roderick's disease, and the circumstances that had reduced him to so
lamentable a condition. He succeeded in obtaining the necessary
information from an eminent medical gentleman.
Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife- now nearly
four years ago- his associates had observed a singular gloom spreading
over his daily life, like those chill, gray mists that sometimes steal
away the sunshine from a summer's morning. The symptoms caused them
endless perplexity. They knew not whether ill health were robbing
his spirits of elasticity; or whether a canker of the mind was
gradually eating, as such cankers do, from his moral system into the
physical frame, which is but the shadow of the former. They looked for
the root of this trouble in his shattered schemes of domestic bliss-
wilfully shattered by himself-but could not be satisfied of its
existence there. Some thought that their once brilliant friend was
in an incipient stage of insanity, of which his passionate impulses
had perhaps been the forerun
ners; others prognosticated a general
blight and gradual decline. From Roderick's own lips, they could learn
nothing. More than once, it is true, he had been heard to say,
clutching his hands convulsively upon his breast- "It gnaws me! It
gnaws me!"- but, by different auditors, a great diversity of
explanation was assigned to this ominous expression. What could it be,
that gnawed the breast of Roderick Elliston? Was it sorrow? Was it
merely the tooth of physical disease? Or, in his reckless course,
often verging upon profligacy, if not plunging into its depths, had he
been guilty of some deed, which made his bosom a prey to the
deadlier fangs of remorse? There was plausible ground for each of
these conjectures; but it must not be concealed that more than one
elderly gentleman, the victim of good cheer and slothful habits,
magisterially pronounced the secret of the whole matter to be
Dyspepsia!
Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally he had become the
subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance
to such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from
all companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror to him;
not merely the light of a friend's countenance; but even the blessed
sunshine, likewise, which, in its universal beneficence, typifies
the radiance of the Creator's face, expressing his love for all the
creatures of his hand. The dusky twilight was now too transparent
for Roderick Elliston; the blackest midnight was his chosen hour to
steal abroad; and if ever he were seen, it was when the watchman's
lantern gleamed upon his figure, gliding along the street with his
hands clutched upon his bosom, still muttering: "It gnaws me! It gnaws
me!" What could it be that gnawed him?
After a time, it became known that Elliston was in the habit of
resorting to all the noted quacks that infested the city, or whom
money would tempt to journey thither from a distance. By one of
these persons, in the exultation of a supposed cure, it was proclaimed
far and wide, by dint of hand-bills and little pamphlets on dingy
paper, that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston, Esq., had
been relieved of a SNAKE in his stomach! So here was the monstrous
secret, ejected from its lurking-place into public view, in all its
horrible deformity. The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent.
He, if it were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living
den. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect it was supposed,
of some stupefying drug, which more nearly caused the death of the
patient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick
Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune
the town talk- the more than nine days' wonder and horror- while, at
his bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and the
gnawing of that restless fang, which seemed to gratify at once a
p
hysical appetite and a fiendish spite.
He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his
father's house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in his
cradle.
"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over
his heart. "What do people say of me, Scipio?"
"Sir! my poor master! that you had a serpent in your bosom,"
answered the servant, with hesitation.
"And what else?" asked Roderick, with a ghastly look at the man.
"Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio; "only that the
Doctor gave you a powder, and that the snake leapt out upon the
floor."
"No, no!" muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, and
pressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast- "I
feel him still. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"
From this time, the miserable sufferer ceased to shun the world,
but rather solicited and forced himself upon the notice of
acquaintances and strangers. It was partly the result of
desperation, on finding that the cavern of his own bosom had not
proved deep and dark enough to hide the secret, even while it was so
secure a fortress for the loathsome fiend that had crept into it. shudder
But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom of the
intense morbidness which now pervaded his nature. All persons,
chronically diseased, are egotists, whether the disease be of the mind
or body; whether sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity of
some endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mortal life. Such
individuals are made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in
which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object
with them, that they cannot but present it to the face of every casual
passer-by. There is a pleasure- perhaps the greatest of which the
sufferer is susceptible- in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb,
or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the crime, with so much
the more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrusting
up its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is that cancer,
or that crime, which constitutes their respective individuality.
Roderick Elliston, who, a little while before had held himself so
scornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full allegiance to
this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed the symbol of a
monstrous egotism, to which everything was referred, and which he
pampered, night and day, with a continual and exclusive sacrifice of
devil-worship.
He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens of
insanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided and
gloried himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience of
mankind, by the possession of a double nature, and a life within a
life. He appeared to imagine that the snake was a divinity- not
celestial, it is true, but darkly infernal- and that he thence derived
an eminence and a sanctity, horrid, ind
eed, yet more desirable than
whatever ambition aims at. Thus he drew his misery around him like a
regal mantle, and looked down triumphantly upon those whose vitals
nourished no deadly monster. Oftener, however, his human nature
asserted its empire over him, in the shape of a yearning for
fellowship. It grew to be his custom to spend the whole day in
wandering about the streets, aimlessly, unless it might be called an
aim to establish a species of brotherhood between himself and the
world. With cankered ingenuity, he sought out his own disease in every
breast. Whether insane or not, he showed so keen a perception of
frailty, error, and vice, that many persons gave him credit for
being possessed not merely with a serpent, but with an actual fiend,
who imparted this evil faculty of recognizing whatever was ugliest
in man's heart.
For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty years, had
cherished a hatred against his own brother. Roderick, amidst the
throng of the street, laid his hand on this man's chest, and looking
full into his forbidding face,
"How is the snake today?"- he inquired, with a mock expression of
sympathy.
"The snake!" exclaimed the brother-hater- "What do you mean?"
"The snake! The snake! Does he gnaw you?" persisted Roderick.
"Did you take counsel with him this morning, when you should have been
saying your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your
brother's health, wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy,
when you remembered the profligacy of his only son? And whether he
stung, or whether he frolicked, did you feel his poison throughout
your body and soul, converting everything to sourness and
bitterness? That is the way of such serpents. I have learned the whole
nature of them from my own!"
"Where is the police?" roared the object of Roderick's persecution,
at the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his breast. "Why is
this lunatic allowed to go at large?"
"Ha, ha!" chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man. "His
bosom serpent has stung him then!"
Often, it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a
lighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like
virulence. One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and
gravely inquired after the welfare of his boa-constrictor; for of that
species, Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs be,
since its appetite was enormous enough to devour the whole country and
constitution. At another time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow,
of great wealth, but who skulked about the city in the guise of a
scare-crow, with a patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldy
boots, scraping pence together, and picking up rusty nails. Pretending
to look earnestly at this respectable person's stomach, Roderick
assured him that his snake was a copper-head, and had been generated
by the immense quantities of that base metal, w

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